MUSEO DELLA CARTA

The museum tour, located inside the old Maina Inferiore paper mill, traces the history of paper and the Valle delle Cartiere from its origins to the 20th century in chronological order. Visitors are welcomed into the 16th-century rooms of the paper mill, where the different phases of the ancient method of papermaking are illustrated. The raw material for paper production was rags (linen, hemp and cotton). The rags, after being carefully waxed and shredded, were macerated in large stone vats (some still visible in the museum tour) with water and quicklime. The rags were then reduced to a pulp by the work of wooden hammers, driven by water wheels. With the white pulp thus obtained, the master papermaker produced sheets using a special mould. The sheets were then pressed and put to dry on special drying racks located on the upper floors of the paper mill. Once dry, the sheets were glued in order to obtain the right impermeability and finally smoothed. In the section dedicated to the finds from the archaeological excavations conducted in the Valley of the Paper Mills, an interactive station allows visitors to relive daily life in an ancient paper mill. In the room dedicated to the Paganini printers, also on display are rare and precious volumes printed in Toscolano in the first half of the 16th century, whose history comes alive thanks to an interactive installation dedicated to the work of the two printers, and one dedicated to the history of the Toscolano edition of the Baldus, a poem written by Teofilo Folengo and printed by Alessandro Paganini.